RyanHarne.com

My anticipation for a new sub-notebook announcement today was not carried through to reality. Instead, iTV became Apple TV and became reality, the iPhone rumors were true but amazingly insufficient, and little else was said over the two-hour-long Keynote. Am I let down at no other neato product announcements? Do I brush off this Keynote as a dull year? Will I skip watching the Quicktime stream once it gets posted by Apple?

No on all accounts. In fact, I see the company rumblings today as some of the greatest progress Apple has made in years. My explanation starts with the tale of the Full House years, the early 1990s and a bit before.

With the first personal computer revolution a few years old, operating system competition was volatile; hardware vendors were ready to ship their computers with an included OS easing the work on consumers. Microsoft licensed 3.1 and, later…, Windows 95 to those vendors, effectively sealing the deal for operating system takeover and dominance. Apple lost footing and momentum and began to fade towards bankrupcy.

As the timeline of technological progression creeps further towards the present, Apple came back following Steve Jobs’ return to power after then-CEO Amelio was ousted by an infuriated Board of Directors. Jobs has the vision that first propelled the company, but his unfortunate exile shorted the electrical lifeline Apple would have needed to compete in the early 1990s. Following the reunion, iMac, iPod, G4, G5, Intel-partnership - it is all common knowledge now, or you can browse Wikipedia to refresh any gaps you may have.

The personal computer market today is torn into two factions: PCs and Macs. Business environments frequently use PCs due to the first Windows proliferation with 3.1 & 95; more and more home/educational/creative users are switching to Macs, with marketshare increases every year. Apple has made enormous software strides in the past 6 years, releasing continuous and major updates to their OS while Microsoft has clearly struggled to get one release off the ground. Apple also has the great advantage of product [every]placement with the iPod.

Now, to the latest. The iPhone announcement today was a major wound for Microsoft; let’s call it the 5th of 10 nails in the coffin. A quick Vista preview shows very few User Interface (UI) advances; it is well known that software engineers are greatly challenged at Microsoft, but not to “find a way to make it happen” but rather to “jump around many committees’ and managers’ wishes”. It creates a disastrous quagmire of productivity, sending bright and promising programmers to their death in red tape.

Again, in the meantime, Apple has launched technology forward, often coming up with their own standards (or grasping very innovative ideas) in order to soar over the present chasms and gaps - FireWire, wireless, axe the floppy, all-in-one, to name a few. The iPhone shows that Apple has two main motives: #1) forget all about the competition and #2) destroy the competition by pursuing #1.

Wars over technology-based consumer goods are fought in two, distinct manners. The first method involves coming up with harder, better, faster, stronger products. This approach is traditional and could be metaphorically described as a tug-of-war against the superpowers where little ground is ever lost or won. Occasional, ground-breaking products are released which set a competitor apart and grants them the limelight; but the effect of the punch is short-lived and is eventually returned.

Apple has announced, in tandem with the iPhone, that they are choosing the second method of war with Microsoft, their great rival: fight your war on a new battleground. Shifting the focus of the engagement allows the initiator home-field advantage; the second-comer has to adjust to a new setting, a new barometric pressure, a new gravity. The iPhone incorporates such unprecedented user interaction while maintaining utter simplicity that Microsoft can only shake in their combat boots. Under the skin, the iPhone is running OS X, Apple’s landmark operating system, yet it is being activated by casual hand motions and ignores careless gestures if the device is accidentally brushed against. Now, again, take a quick look at Vista; does that operating system scream hi-tech UI? … I’ll pause to let the laughs die down.

Apple’s new battlefield will destroy Microsoft. If consumers are greeted with technology like the iPhone, but have to return to their Windows-running PCs at the end of the day, where, naturally, will they turn for their next computer purchase? The day has come when Macs can run Windows, if necessary, and the my-software-only-runs-on-Windows excuse is laughably irrelevant; these and other reasons suggest an imminent moment when Mac marketshare crests 50%, when PC users are deserting the Microsoft militia in alarming numbers.

Lastly, and somewhat in iteration of an earlier point, the iPhone technology seals the deal with CEOs who want to be on the winning-side of the technological war. Considering what we are looking at today, in the iPhone, Microsoft is finding itself devolving and reaching its obsolescence. It’s 2017, we are browsing old photos on our home computer during the holidays, and a conversation begins about the technology we knew while growing up: “Remember dot-matrix printing?” “Gosh, was that a hoot! But what about film cameras, I wonder if pawn shops do anything other than recycle those things now..” “Of course. And who could forget Microsoft? Oh, the things our kids won’t grow up… at least, they won’t miss them.”

I’ve spoken enough. It’s time for me to buy an iMac.

I have never thought to personally give predictions as Macworld Keynotes approach but I have an idea. Much laptop technology of late has been aimed at lowering power consumption (the 8-hour battery life is now here, thanks to great, power-friendly procs) and also pointed to using combinations of standard RAM and NAND memory, in order to further minimize battery usage. Lastly, display technologies and capabilities have advanced far beyond the early 2000 years’ offerings. In effect, the field is open to two types of notebook computers: one practically based on the old design, but instead able to give longer performance on the battery; and another, new, radically miniaturized laptop that can fight with the big boys.

This, and a few other reasons, is why I propose that at the Keynote tomorrow, Jobs will add one new model to the Mac line-up - the MacBook mini. I understand the likelihood of announcements like iLife & iWork 07 and more info/launch data for the iTV, but a full-featured, media-centric computer seems to fit well in the mix considering today’s and tomorrow’s technology. I really don’t expect that iPhone stuff, not at all; or at least the prospect of an iPhone doesn’t get my gears turning.

Anyways. To hold the fort until 12pm EST Tuesday, I encourage you to watch some old Keynote bits from days gone by ($3299 for a PowerBook?!).

The New Year’s reflection spirit has captured my consciousness once again. As I take my first few steps into 2007, I quickly see how different of a year it portends to be. Without a great deal of reliance on speculation, 2007 will be the year of my first apartment, the year of an internship with career-relevance, and the year of clear graduate studies focus. It’s just a hoard of importance crammed into 365 days.

Where my inner motors were once-2006 concerned with maintaining inner, mental function under the pressures of balancing physical capacities, every bit of my intellectual faculties will be assessed this year, at least more so than before. 2006 was an elliptical trainer stuck on HIGH as 2007 will be an excruciating Oxford entrance exam/interview.

To some it may sound as another nuance of pure exhaustion, but this year has a clear distinction of possibility the last year could not equal. 2006 provided a chance to eventually breathe a superlative sigh of relief; 2007 could give me the opportunity to experience the incredible satisfaction of personal performance.

As a starter, I am trying to finish up Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged before the new semester begins. What a brilliant work! That it’s a horror to some friends of mine to read Rand is a true crime.

What many inspirational conversations I am involved in seem to have a common thread: read, hear, learn, do. Keeping with the New Year’s encouragements, that will be my offering to everyone for 2007. And if I were to simplify that for those afraid of major commitments with verbs, then just Read. One caveat, make sure your diet contains a wide-range of authors and subjects, libraries are not to be evaded.

It will be quickly remembered that I began some type of anti-Starbucks front using the Collegiate Times as a sort of sounding board for my views and research. My few visits to the coffee corp. were solely for espresso-making hardware, which I continue to hail as some of the best I have laid hands on. Lately, though, I took a second look on my views and assessed whether my outcome was fully justified.

Oxfam’s Day of Action challenged Starbucks to answer questions about payments to suppliers. Starbucks responded, just as they did to my prodding, and I am very well impressed with their remarks. This is a similar type of response that I received from the VP of Corp. Social Responsibility to my CT pieces. Further Starbucks’ website detailing their responsibility and efforts is admirable. Lastly, the fact that they responded to Oxfam also using the YouTube medium was impressive - it’s great to see corporations take hold of outlets that some still perceive as sub-par, when reality proves the power of those resources.

Reconciliation, maybe? Not entirely. Yet, I applaud Starbucks’ efforts to support their supplier/farmer base, which truly makes their company. I do not applaud their domestic practices of cluster bombing competitors or their own cannibalization tactics, which I find to be some of many murky paths through a corporate corruption swamp that inevitably leave a clear mark. When it comes to buying coffee or coffee drinks, I do not consider Starbucks as a potential; their espresso is unimpressive and the atmosphere is similar to any other chain environment that I eschew.

Still, knowing a few bits more of their coffee-buying practices, my future coffee bean-buying will heed the fertility goddess, to an extent. It always comes down to location, to be sure. If a nice local coffeeshop is nearby, no hesitation would be evident in my decision to go in that direction. I will always prefer local.

But, this moderate change of heart is a far cry from an about face. I’m still fair-game for a good, old-fashioned Oxfam picketing if I were in the right mood, and if the sandwich board were stylish enough.

Since my freshman arrival at Virginia Tech, I have progressively moved away from cars. Middle school and high school years impressed upon me the important social buffer that an automobile affords, able to compensate not only for insecurity issues but also for brains. Have you realized that the expectation that “someone owns a sportscar equals someone who understands cars” is no longer relevant, at all? Cars are a social symbol today, equivalent to indoor plumbing.

Yet, college life has taught me to slowly remove myself from the ton of metal and plastic. Approaching the finale of my fourth year at VT, I not only have no desire to ever own a car (or live somewhere where cars are necessity) but I fully lost my driving lust, the grin you get when an engine races you along. What I see when driving cars are the millions of years of practically static natural processes turning plant matter into oil, the ridiculous materialistic attachments auto-owners parade about, and the decentralizing effects that transportation systems have had on local communities. Granted, I may personally support, in moral and word, that last segment, but it is a painful regimentation for a small town to experience when interstates want their way and the local government promises enormous financial returns. Those promises always come true (for a time), though - chains always return financially, but they further the assimilation of American consumer culture that happens to not well buffer local cultures.

America is a geographically-huge nation demanding quick and cheap transportation, primarily for the many products (Made in China) being sold all over. Since low-altitude mono-hover-rails never caught on, the country ended up on relying on big truck transit. Now, with oil prices rising and demands for greater security in the big-transit industry coming about, the advantages of truck transportation are becoming limited. But what are the other options? Rail would be the closest thing, but it is primarily an industrial-only service, quickly inhibited by the road transit system itself considering how slow trains must travel around towns (railroad crossings, specifically). Nothing other than rail would really solve the transit issue here.

I was thinking about this quandary during the Christmastime. Knowing that trying to break up road transportation entirely would be an absurd waste of time and money, there must be a way to incorporate the highway systems into a new transportation method that would work in tandem with present-day traffic. Think of two types of vehicles running alongside each other, just one being greatly more efficient than the other, one producing far less exhaust than the other. Not a new car, not a new fuel, but a new way of getting around. Be inventive.

And all this from just hating cars. Imagine that.

I am no good at New Year’s resolutions. In fact, the spirit of starting over and discovering new motivation doesn’t even come to mind, with my image of New Year’s. I watched Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve with some friends last night and was in awe at the sight of mindless 20somethings celebrating little more than the opportunity to “live”. But, I might say, if your life is so dreary that you take any chance to party and forget your troubles, then you are not living to begin with. Anyways. Actually, I was more amazed at Dick Clark’s unbelievable ability to refrain from blinking and soldier through those teleprompts.

So, this year, I hope to maintain resolute on two things: cycling and recycling. Now that I have a bike on campus, the opportunities for grand group exercise are open to me. While on break duty, I have spent several hours of my days biking around Blacksburg, twice to Christiansburg. The sights are beautiful, the experience gratifying. This is something I hope to continue, with an equal fervor, into 2007. As 2006 closed, I was slowly building up a habit of recycling, not simply the glass-plastic-paper kind but the attitude of reusing things, generally. I think that an approach of sustaining usability of an item, even after its expected life, is going to be commonplace in coming years. An old computer gets scrapped for parts or put to eBay; cracked dishwares become vases; clothes go to Goodwill; books I read are sent to friends rather than accumulate dust. Why not start now? or at least more so aim my focus in that direction.

In reality, my favorite part of New Year’s is seeing atomic clocks (computers, cell phones, atomic clocks, etc) all change the year digits. It’s assuring that electronics still love us and feel the need to make the leap with us as well.